In the forum "Genius Forum" you guys often talk about abstract thoughts, parallels, infinites, wisdom, logic, and God, amongst other things, of course.

Yet I've realized alot of you aren't in search of gaining knowledge, which is supposedly this forums intent, rather you are here to one-up one another. This doesn't go for all of you, and for some of you I really respect your posts as they are insightful and have some consitency and meaning to them.

But I am really getting sick of reading 7,000 words on a page, and then realizing that nothing constructive has been said, and in fact alot of incorrect things have been said, as well as flawed logic, and what is even more astounding as I reach the end of the page is that the responders overlook the most obvious flaws of the arguement, showing that both posters are not thinking coherently, but rather try to still one up one another.

There seems to be a few things people really don't understand on this forum, one being the idea of infinity, both mathematically and within our own dimensions. If you don't understand infinity, just ask, just say you don't understand it, don't start explaining it if you don't completely understand it.

Yes it is completely possible to understand infinity with mathematical thought, although it is not possible to imagine it in our minds, as we have to place a beginnning and an end to everything.

What I am saying is, I'm really not going to talk to most of you, since most of you really don't seem willing to construct a gain from anyone else, and I'm sure you don't give a crap because your ego starts posting on this page before you do.

That's all I'm going to say, have a fantastic fucking day you doosh begs. :)

I believe consciousness has to do solely with short term memory storage.

your percieve, your brain decides to store.

I have little neurological background so what I've come up with is uneducated, but to me seems very plausible.

I think there is a Short-short term memory, a short term memory, and a long term memory.

I think consciousness is the experience of short-short-term memory.

You perceive, your brain blocks out a good percentage of what you are capable of experiencing - sounds, lights, shapes, ideas. And you experience this sort of picture in front of you. This is short-short term memory. What you can remember 5 minutes from now is short-term memory, and a year is long term.

The storage of this short-short term memory is what causes us to use information and quantify it as valuable for later.

I believe memory is alot more important to understanding consciousness then most people assume.

Ok, now, a bit of extra reading here:

We propose that concepts arise from the mapping by the brain itself of the activity of the brain's own areas and regions. Two more requirements for conscious experience are the appearance of a categorical memory responsive to value and the activity of reentry, which is the fundamental integrative mechanism in higher brains. We propose that primary consciousness emerged in evolution when, through the appearance of new circuits mediating reentry, posterior areas of the brain that are involved in perceptual categorization were dynamically linked to anterior areas that are responsible for a value-based memory. With such means in place, an animal would be able to build a remembered present-a scene that adaptively links immediate or imagined contingencies to that animal's previous history of value-driven behavior. - Gerald M. Edelman & Giulio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination / Chapter Nine: Perception Into Memory pp. 102 - 103

The point here is that Edelman and Tononi, in the paper on IIT aren't specifically talking about memory, this is something you don't know the difference of because you haven't really studied the subject much, as you openly admitted. So, in one instance you make a completely erroneous assumption about Edelman and Tononi's work, and claim to not really know anything about it, except that it "falls short" because it doesn't mention memory. Well, I guess you haven't read A Universe of Consciousness by Edelman to know what he says in the chapters "Nonrepresentational Memory" and "Perception into Memory: The Remembered Present". Basically, you are talking out your ass, and putting down stuff you don't understand, as if you had a superior grasp on the subject. Then turn around and accuse Genius members of doing the same thing.

Animus wrote:Let me show you somethingOk, now, a bit of extra reading here:

We propose that concepts arise from the mapping by the brain itself of the activity of the brain's own areas and regions. Two more requirements for conscious experience are the appearance of a categorical memory responsive to value and the activity of reentry, which is the fundamental integrative mechanism in higher brains. We propose that primary consciousness emerged in evolution when, through the appearance of new circuits mediating reentry, posterior areas of the brain that are involved in perceptual categorization were dynamically linked to anterior areas that are responsible for a value-based memory. With such means in place, an animal would be able to build a remembered present-a scene that adaptively links immediate or imagined contingencies to that animal's previous history of value-driven behavior. - Gerald M. Edelman & Giulio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination / Chapter Nine: Perception Into Memory pp. 102 - 103

The point here is that Edelman and Tononi, in the paper on IIT aren't specifically talking about memory, this is something you don't know the difference of because you haven't really studied the subject much, as you openly admitted. So, in one instance you make a completely erroneous assumption about Edelman and Tononi's work, and claim to not really know anything about it, except that it "falls short" because it doesn't mention memory. Well, I guess you haven't read A Universe of Consciousness by Edelman to know what he says in the chapters "Nonrepresentational Memory" and "Perception into Memory: The Remembered Present". Basically, you are talking out your ass, and putting down stuff you don't understand, as if you had a superior grasp on the subject. Then turn around and accuse Genius members of doing the same thing.

Here's the deal, I'm conscious, are you? To be an 'expert' on something means you have studied a phenomenon for a large period of time, relative to most other people. Should we all not be experts on consciousness, since we have access to it every day, and the tools to manipulate it are dirt cheap?

These two people are geniuses, they have come to understand the brain a great deal within the past decade(s) that they have been working. Brain mapping & plasticity are crucial to really getting down to the basics of the brain, however. What they are basically saying in this article is that consciousness is the connection between the older parts of the brains and the newer parts, allowing for a link between experiences and ideas, with what is happening /now/. Well yeah, that's pretty fxing obvious isn't it? Should I read this book so I can finally come to that conclusion? It still doesn't explain consciousness, what they have just explained as consciousness, can be completely done unconsciously, as a computer. There is no reason that what you have just italicized would bring consciousness.

I am not talking out my ass because to be an expert on this psychology and neurology, all one needs is alot of time and alot of thought. I do not know the anatomy of the brain by heart, now the names of every communicator, but I sure as helle experience them. I will never claim to be an expert neurologist, however, psychology comes natural to me, and consciousness is sure as hell important to psychology.

The subject of consciousness, until breakthrough occurs, will not grab my attention.

As ffor the original post & other posters;

Do you not read the irony in this post itself? Why take it so serious? It just goes on & on.

I have a unique style of posting on forums, and it's really hard to understand my meaning behind my posts, with the lack of any tonal, postural language. But I persist in my style anyways, eventually (hopefully) you will build a more accurate picture of what I'm trying to get accross.

We propose that concepts arise from the mapping by the brain itself of the activity of the brain's own areas and regions. Two more requirements for conscious experience are the appearance of a categorical memory responsive to value and the activity of reentry, which is the fundamental integrative mechanism in higher brains. We propose that primary consciousness emerged in evolution when, through the appearance of new circuits mediating reentry, posterior areas of the brain that are involved in perceptual categorization were dynamically linked to anterior areas that are responsible for a value-based memory. With such means in place, an animal would be able to build a remembered present-a scene that adaptively links immediate or imagined contingencies to that animal's previous history of value-driven behavior. - Gerald M. Edelman & Giulio Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination / Chapter Nine: Perception Into Memory pp. 102 - 103

The point here is that Edelman and Tononi, in the paper on IIT aren't specifically talking about memory, this is something you don't know the difference of because you haven't really studied the subject much, as you openly admitted. So, in one instance you make a completely erroneous assumption about Edelman and Tononi's work, and claim to not really know anything about it, except that it "falls short" because it doesn't mention memory. Well, I guess you haven't read A Universe of Consciousness by Edelman to know what he says in the chapters "Nonrepresentational Memory" and "Perception into Memory: The Remembered Present". Basically, you are talking out your ass, and putting down stuff you don't understand, as if you had a superior grasp on the subject. Then turn around and accuse Genius members of doing the same thing.

Here's the deal, I'm conscious, are you? To be an 'expert' on something means you have studied a phenomenon for a large period of time, relative to most other people. Should we all not be experts on consciousness, since we have access to it every day, and the tools to manipulate it are dirt cheap?

That's the view of naive realists, but no, not true. Do you have any means of performing transcranial magnetic stimulation? Not systematically I imagine.

These two people are geniuses, they have come to understand the brain a great deal within the past decade(s) that they have been working. Brain mapping & plasticity are crucial to really getting down to the basics of the brain, however. What they are basically saying in this article is that consciousness is the connection between the older parts of the brains and the newer parts, allowing for a link between experiences and ideas, with what is happening /now/. Well yeah, that's pretty fxing obvious isn't it? Should I read this book so I can finally come to that conclusion? It still doesn't explain consciousness, what they have just explained as consciousness, can be completely done unconsciously, as a computer. There is no reason that what you have just italicized would bring consciousness.

I didn't say it would and neither did they, I've only cited you a small portion of their book. I did this to illustrate flawed judgement on your part of something you don't really understand, their work. In fact, very little of the book discusses these issues from the point of observation - or psychology if you please - because that ignores the problem they are addressing. The problem they attempt to address is precisely the problem you are awaiting a breakthrough for, but if you prejudge the work of others as irrelevant or flawed, then I guess you won't be aware of such a breakthrough were it to occur. Now, you think that consciousness has something to do with memory and any theory that doesn't mention it must be flawed, is that correct? And then in this quotation Edelman and Tononi reference memory as a part of their over-all consideration, so your original issue with it is invalid, and now you come up with another reason which is equally invalid, except this time you are rejecting their work because they did exactly what you criticized them for not doing.

I am not talking out my ass because to be an expert on this psychology and neurology, all one needs is alot of time and alot of thought. I do not know the anatomy of the brain by heart, now the names of every communicator, but I sure as helle experience them. I will never claim to be an expert neurologist, however, psychology comes natural to me, and consciousness is sure as hell important to psychology.

The subject of consciousness, until breakthrough occurs, will not grab my attention.

As ffor the original post & other posters;

Do you not read the irony in this post itself? Why take it so serious? It just goes on & on.

I have a unique style of posting on forums, and it's really hard to understand my meaning behind my posts, with the lack of any tonal, postural language. But I persist in my style anyways, eventually (hopefully) you will build a more accurate picture of what I'm trying to get accross.

Has funz

Well thats great in speech, but I've been conscious all my life, I've studied a ton of psychology and neuroanatomy. I try to keep up to date on all the advances in both fields and it seems to me that you lack even an introductory understanding of either. So I guess this definition of knowing needs some revision, wouldn't you say?

Let me give you a brief outline of Edelman and Tononi's work to elucidate the problem you are having interpreting their work. As I believe I said already, the book A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination, seeks to answer the Hagelian problem of "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" to which Edelman and Tononi respond basically it is not like anything to be a bat because bats do not have a functionally insulated "dynamic core". Now, what Edelman and Tononi mean by a "dynamic core" is something which is functionally clustered through vast tracts of reentrant mapping, and functionally insulated from other features of the brain. The experimental observations in experimental neuroscience suggest that certain parts of the brain are not required for consciousness, however they inform consciousness. By looking at this data and others, Edelman and Tononi hypothesized that the thalamocortical system is necessary for consciousness and possess the functional insulation and clustering required. Memory is a part of it, but keep in mind that memory is a term used in folk psychology and psychology, it has nothing directly to do with the neural correlates of consciousness. The problem here is that memory itself correlates with neurology and itself must be described in terms of morphology and functionalism. Memory refers to a vast set of processes occurring within the brain and does no good for describing how the brain is or becomes conscious. You can have a flippant attitude towards neuroscience as many philosophers do, but people who suffer brain damage are still going to suffer consciously, there is a correlation between mental phenomena and brain phenomena. In another thread we discussed "Grandmother cells" or "gnostic units" as those cells which sit atop the neural hierarchy for discrimination, but Edelman and Tononi adequately argue that the content of those cells, in and of themselves, is utterly meaningless, it is only when their content is contextualized in a broader "remembered present" that meaning arises from them. This tackles the debate in computational neuroscience over the representational structure. Edelman and Tononi argue that memory is non-representational and neural structures are non-computational, and that all such notions arise within the dynamic core itself. The dynamic core is not a particular set of cells, the cells constituting the core change periodically, what the dynamic core is though, is a process occurring within the morphology of the human brain. So the theory, on the whole is not morphological, it does not depend on the system being a brain, it is a functionalist/interactionist description of consciousness utilizing the brain as evidence, since it is the only recognizably conscious thing in the universe.

Edelman and Tononi's theory would apply to anything that is functionally segregated/insulated from the rest of the world. It may have "ports in" and "ports out", but the high level of differentiation and complexity within the dynamic core is isolated from the rest of the world. This is an important point however, that the dynamic core constitutes also a high level of differentiation and complexity and not simply that it is functionally insulated. Edelman and Tononi devised methods for measuring the differentiation and complexity - its reentrant mappings/functional morphology - mathematically, which is what the paper on IIT was about. If their book was about memory, they'd be required to explain how nerve cells give rise to memory, which they do discuss in those two chapters, in the service of the bigger picture of the "dynamic core" hypothesis. Anyway, there are other considerations from the book, such as the Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, which is a pretty central theme to the hypothesis. I suggest reading the book if you really want to have an informed opinion on their work.

The initial question "what is it like to be a bat" relies on your own brain to compare itself to a bat. That is a very deep subject in itself, and is more correlated with your own brain's perception, rather than the bat's.

Second, I still believe the idea's of re-entrant mapping, consecutive firing, and communication between the 'now' and 'then' - i.e. comparing current experiences with older memories as well as relating and computing with them will never be enough to describe consciousness - it diverges in a mental sense, and can never account for consciousness, I still believe it is directly connected to storing memories. The action of storing memories.

I will read the book with an open mind however, and I'll let this topic rest until then.

IJesusChrist wrote:That is all very interesting, and now I plan to get that book,

I still want to say a few things,

Me too

The initial question "what is it like to be a bat" relies on your own brain to compare itself to a bat. That is a very deep subject in itself, and is more correlated with your own brain's perception, rather than the bat's.

That is a problem that can be adequately resolved by the kind of functionalist theory proposed by Edelman and Tononi. With such tools in hand it is possible to determine in some respect what it is like to be a bat, it is a coincidence of the theory that it isn't like anything to be a bat. The theory postulates that the sense of a self, and particularly an awareness of being aware, depends on certain subsystems which are not present in bats. They term a bat's awareness "Primary Consciousness" which they suggest might be similar to mystical states of consciousness. It is otherwise quite difficult for us to imagine a consciousness within which we are not aware that we are conscious, as your statements imply.

Second, I still believe the idea's of re-entrant mapping, consecutive firing, and communication between the 'now' and 'then' - i.e. comparing current experiences with older memories as well as relating and computing with them will never be enough to describe consciousness - it diverges in a mental sense, and can never account for consciousness, I still believe it is directly connected to storing memories. The action of storing memories.

Look, it is a short book by a couple of guys tackling some pretty heavy issues in neuroscience. Neuroscience itself is a relatively new branch of science and went through some hard lessons, what they sometimes call the dark ages of neuroscience. The study of consciousness was never a matter of practice. But look at the data, there is a lot that can be learned from such research. There is a perceptual gap, what philosopher's call "The Hard Problem" of consciousness. This will never be bridged except by the observer themselves. As long as you look at a brain and say there is nothing resembling consciousness you will be able to maintain that illusion. There is plenty resembling consciousness its just not what we naively expect to find. When looking at the brain we are objectively perceiving a subject and run into all kinds of problems as such. Of course we will never see subjectivity outside of ourselves, that is what our objective view is - outside ourselves. The Hard Problem is a problem of flawed reasoning. The objective and subjective views are two sides of the same coin. Edelman and Tononi subtitle their book "How Matter Becomes Imagination", which indicates a materialist view, one might assume then that they identify with matter. However, the title of the book is "A Universe of Consciousness" which implies quite the opposite. If you ask me, its a blatant contradiction, but maybe thats the point. When it comes to objective/subjective dichotomy its all in the eye of the beholder. The book doesn't expand on the title or much of the authors' philosophy, but one might imagine that it involves something other than materialism, something non-dual, probably purely causal processes. Which is where my thinking is at, there are plenty of problems in explaining consciousness and I don't think the book seeks to answer all of them.

Edelman and Tononi seem to think that the "remembered present" is along the lines of your thinking. Except, their theory is there is only non-representational memory, states of the system that in-concert generate the conscious experience of having a memory of particular things, and only when taken in the current conscious experience. I don't really grasp the idea that memory is non-representational, other than to say that their is no actual imagery stored in the neurons. That is, the cells responding to your grandmother don't actually contain an image of your grandmother, the grandmother is a product of the activity of those cells and the rest of the dynamic core. Their is a matter of time, most circuits take about 150ms to complete, however we are not even capable of perceiving this short of time, a limitation of our minds. We generally are unable to recognize things in a time-span shorter than 300ms. So the activity of the thalamocortical system is rapid enough to correlate with conscious experience. This is what I think they mean by the "remembered present", the delay in conscious perception and the activity of the brain which is required for it to occur. We are always behind ourselves, our conscious experience is a shadow of sorts.

I will read the book with an open mind however, and I'll let this topic rest until then.

Their is a matter of time, most circuits take about 150ms to complete, however we are not even capable of perceiving this short of time, a limitation of our minds. We generally are unable to recognize things in a time-span shorter than 300ms.

This was interesting.

The grandma bit has less to do with consciousness, more to do with congition, which I find easier to understand.

Animus, you do realize you did exactly what I wanted in this thread, you disagreed with me, yet you stated exact facts (for the most part). You described why you believe it, as well as why I should believe it.

This is what I wanted, a discussion where someone isn't dodgeing bullets, thank you.